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Faisal Kenanah

Faisal Kenanah is Senior Lecturer (Maître de conférences) in Arabic Studies at the University of Caen Normandy, a permanent member of ERLIS (Research Team on Literatures, Imaginaries and Societies, UR 4254) and an associate member of CRISCO (Inter-language Research Centre on Meaning in Context, UR 4255).

Holder of the agrégation in Arabic and a doctorate in Arabic language, literature and civilisation from Bordeaux III University (Michel de Montaigne), he defended his thesis on the major work of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023), Kitāb al-Imtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasa. His research focuses on the maǧlis (circle, gathering, council) as a locus of knowledge, and on the munāẓara (controversy) as the art of debate. He has organised several scholarly events on these themes, notably in 2022 at the universities of Caen and Rennes 2, in 2023 at Lyon 2 within the 5 th GIS-MOMM Congress on Middle Eastern and Muslim Worlds Studies, and in 2025 at Caen.

He also takes interest in the circulation of knowledge between East and West, a topic he addressed at a conference he co-organised in January 2026 at Caen on « Scholarly Sociabilities and the Transmission of Knowledge: Crossed Perspectives between East and West ». His most recent monograph, Les animaux chez Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī : classement et influences des transmissions (Aristote, Ibn al-Biṭrīq, Ǧāḥiẓ), was published by Safran in 2023.

In parallel, he devotes a significant part of his work to the didactics and pedagogy of Arabic as a foreign language, and has published several methods in this field, notably L’arabe dans toutes ses formes (L’Harmattan) and Progresser en arabe (Ophrys). He is also Deputy Director of the LEA Department of the UFR LVE at the University of Caen Normandy.

At the Pluriel Congress in Cordoba in February 2026, he delivered a paper entitled : « Ethics and aesthetics in the thought of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023) ».

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